Read this to find out WHY MUSCLE GROWS! Important! SHOCKERS INSIDE!

[flex-mb]

Blood&Iron - Many Olympic Lifters do indeed max out (or do 95% of their max weight in the snatch, C & J, front and back squat) several times per week. Check out a trianing hall tape from Ironmind Enterprises. They have real footage from Olympic lifters from all over the world training - some even twice a day! Some of these guys do not have the greatest looking bodies in the world. They are only doing sets of 5 reps at the most. Some are very big however. Everyone responds differently. Olympic lifters also have the most efficient nervous systems of any athlete period. They also have the fastest refelxes as well of any Olympic athletes. You are incorrect in stating that they never max out. In fact they do often to prepare for their big competition lifts. Also go to www.drsqaut.com. Fed Hatfield does not have a Phd. in Sociology. He has a Phd. in the social sciences of sport. He also studied at the Lenin Instistitie of Sport in Moscow. Many of his theories have been developed and/or borrowed from the Russians. Dr. Hatfield in also one of the most well respected Westerners in Russia. If you are arguing with the Russians on their ways of training, the you are disputing over 30 years of empirical data that prove they are the foremost in developing strength in athletes.

 

[Blood&Iron]

i was joking with you at first(knowing your take on plyos), but for you to assume that HIT is used in season... well maybe im not. plyometric and event oriented training is the core of inseason work, strength training (especially for hypertrophy) tends to get the back seat as power and reactive explosiveness is now desired. assuming the schools you mentioned above have track and field, basketball, etc. I have no doubt that they use reactive neuromuscular training (plyos) to increase performance.

offseason and for strength work....i may agree with you that they use HIT. but i dont know an AT or strength coach that doesnt have a CSCS cert. CSCS being through NSCA, their focus for inseason is plyos and speed(if we are talking about a sport that requires: running, jumping, changing directions rapidly, etc.)

There is NO conclusive evidence in the literature that inducing the myotactic reflex of a muscle by using a pre-stretch leads to greater power or "explosiveness." It HAS been shown to lead to patellar tendinitis, shin splints, and ankle and knee strains, among other things. There is a notion, which many advocates of plyometrics seem to conveniently ignore, called the Principle of Specificity. Skills that superficially appear very similar are based on very different patterns of muscular activity. Specificity consists of four basic elements:
1) Muscle specificity - the EXACT same muscle used in the skill must be used in the exercise
2)Movement specificity - the EXACT movement pattern used in the skill must be used in the exercise
3)Speed specificity - the speed of movement used in the skill must be IDENTICAL to that used in the exercise
4)Resistance specificity - the external resistance in the skill must be PRECISELY the same as that used in the exercise
At best an exercise can approximate an athletic skill, but it CANNOT duplicate one. To improve athletic performance, the actual skills must be practiced. A stonger muscle, will however, produce more force and thus allow one to be more explosive. This, however, can be accomplished using any strength training protocol that involves progressive resistance.
Further, there is no conclusive evidence that lifting in an explosive manner will cause a change in the fiber composition of a muscle or selectively recruit fast-twitch fibers. Muscle fibers are recruited in an orderly pattern, based on force requirements.
Anyone who employs a HIT approach is aware of these facts. The fact that a coach may be a member of NSCA does not necessarily mean he regards it as a useful governing organization. Here are two articles on explosive lifting written by coaches mentioned previously. I think they lay to rest any suspicion that these men use plyometrics in-season:

Ken Mannie, strength coach for Michigan State football:
http://www.cyberpump.com/training/trainhard/explosive.html

Jeff Friday, strength coach for Minnesota Vikings:
http://www.cyberpump.com/training/trainhard/explosafe.html

 

[Blood&Iron]

Blood and Iron,

Let's think about this logically. There are several factors to being functionally strong. HIT advocates very few sets. Now, tell me; how do you intend to include:

Dynamic Speed work
Maximum effort (ie; low reps) work
Hypertrophy work

In 2 sets once a week??? It just doesn't work.

What about assistance exercises? You're only as strong as your weakest link. With 2 sets you simply cannot hit all the muscles in the BP for example. What about your rotator cuffs??

HIT simply doesn't make sense too me. Unless you can explain otherwise....

-Zulu

A number of these points I addressed in my response to bignate73. Now, where you got the notion that HIT consists of 2 sets once a week I don't know. As I've stated numerous times previously HIT does not consist of a single protocol. There is almost as much infighting among the proponents of HIT--and it usually quite full of rancor--as there is argument with proponents of periodization and volume. I don't understand at all your assertion that a low-volume of work will somehow fail to work all muscles sufficiently. Once a muscle has been worked to failure, one has done almost everything possible to maximally recruit the muscle fibers. Thus every muscle group can be quite throughly worked with a relatively low volume of sets. As for the rotator cuff, a few sets of l-flyes will suffice.

 

[Blood&Iron]

Blood&Iron - Many Olympic Lifters do indeed max out (or do 95% of their max weight in the snatch, C & J, front and back squat) several times per week. Check out a trianing hall tape from Ironmind Enterprises. They have real footage from Olympic lifters from all over the world training - some even twice a day! Some of these guys do not have the greatest looking bodies in the world. They are only doing sets of 5 reps at the most. Some are very big however. Everyone responds differently. Olympic lifters also have the most efficient nervous systems of any athlete period. They also have the fastest refelxes as well of any Olympic athletes. You are incorrect in stating that they never max out. In fact they do often to prepare for their big competition lifts. Also go to www.drsqaut.com. Fed Hatfield does not have a Phd. in Sociology. He has a Phd. in the social sciences of sport. He also studied at the Lenin Instistitie of Sport in Moscow. Many of his theories have been developed and/or borrowed from the Russians. Dr. Hatfield in also one of the most well respected Westerners in Russia. If you are arguing with the Russians on their ways of training, the you are disputing over 30 years of empirical data that prove they are the foremost in developing strength in athletes.

Since you didn't quote my original post, I'm unsure to what you're referring when you write that "Many olympic lifters do max out..."
I don't believe I ever said that they didn't. I merely stated that when using a periodized approach most lifters use set percentages of their 1-RM and typically don't attempt a 1-RM until they are scheduled to do so. Not all powerlifters employ such an approach, however. As for the "secrets" of Russia and Eastern Europe, and one can include things like plyometrics as well, it is interesting to note that the world record in the 100 meter dash, where "explosiveness" would be most evident has improved from 9.95s in 1968 to about 9.79s in 1999(I'm not sure what the record currently is.) Hardly a staggering improvement if Soviet "secrets" represent such a great leap forward. BTW, the fact that Hatfield's PhD is in the social sciences of sport is no more impressive to me than one in sociology as it still has nothing to do with physiology. Further, I hold to the opinion that Hatfield is a liar and a fraud.

 

[Blood&Iron]

ZZuluZ, bignate73, flex-mb-

If anyone has further doubt regarding HIT, fine. I am not particularly interested in discussing it further. All of this came principally from my assertion that periodization has not been proven to have significant value above other approaches. I don't really care what system people use, and further, sports and the like are essentially quite uninteresting to me. I'm a bodybuilder. I employ those methods that I think best and those among you who see value in other approaches are free to do the same. As I said in my original post regarding this subject, people far more knowledgable than myself have said just about everything there is to say about periodization, plyometrics, and the like. Nothing I've stated has really added to the debates already extant. If I've perhaps sparked the tiniest bit of doubt in your mind--which, unfortunately, I very much doubt.--just look around. I believe the literature, critically analyzed, will support my assertions. But if you chose not to, it makes no difference to me.

 

[N-10-CITY]

Here are some readings (Just for general knowledge. I won't say they either support or refute any of the claims made thus far by any of the respondents to this thread-just read them and formulate your own opinion)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11708714&dopt=Abstract

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11708706&dopt=Abstract

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11708703&dopt=Abstract

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11708701&dopt=Abstract

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11533565&dopt=Abstract

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11447356&dopt=Abstract

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10063823&dopt=Abstract

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8853471&dopt=Abstract

 

[Blood&Iron]

Upon rereading my last post, I realize it implies I am uninterested in hearing rebuttals to my previous few reponses. That was not my intention. Feel free to respond. I only meant to prevent more of the "Well, how do you train X with HIT." sort of questions, as I believe these questions are thoroughly answered by other resources available on the web.